


moral justice

by acanaceous



Category: One Piece
Genre: "gay rights!" -garp, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Marineford Arc, also featuring: garps two favorite words ('shitty' & 'brat'), featuring: my ongoing love affair with the m dash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acanaceous/pseuds/acanaceous
Summary: Dragon is a powerful orator, charismatic and fierce. He had to be, to lead a revolution, but here with his big words and fierce gestures in this dismal little out-of-the-way nearly empty dive it all seems faintly ridiculous. Garp says nothing, looks down at his glass and lets silence speak for him. Dragon huffs a laugh and says, “I figured I’d try.”OR; Marine, be thou for the people.





	moral justice

Garp sits at the counter of the dingy bar, back near the poorly-lit corner but not quite all the way there, nursing a beer and waiting. He doesn’t have to wait long: soon enough there’s a soft rustle of fabric as someone settles down next to him. He doesn’t need to look or even extend his haki to know who it is—he’d recognize that brat anywhere.  
  
“Hey, Dad,” Dragon says.   
  
Garp still doesn’t turn to look at him—he can’t, not if he wants to be able to tell Sengoku he hasn’t seen Dragon the Revolutionary—but he grunts in acknowledgement and asks, “How’ve you been, shitty son?”   
  
“Well enough,” Dragon replies.   
  
“What’ve you been up to?” Garp asks, more out of a desire to needle his son than to try and gain information on the Revolutionaries’ activities. Dragon doesn’t bother to respond, an old hand at predicting his father’s patterns.   
  
Dragon doesn’t ask how Garp’s been. He probably knows already—Revolutionary networks aside, as the Hero of the Marines Garp’s activities are pretty publicized. Instead, after a moment Dragon says, “I hear Nico Robin has been sighted again recently.” He doesn’t say, ‘in my son’s company’, but Garp hears it anyways.   
  
Garp says, “I know.” And then, “Your brat stormed Enies Lobby to save her, so.”   
  
“I heard.” Dragon cracks a smile at this, something proud and a little bit wistful. “Good. I’m glad something of Ohara survives, at least.”   
  
Garp grumbles, because he sees where this conversation is going now. He can’t even have one little chat with his son without it turning political, can he—part of being the father to the most wanted man in the world. “So am I,” he says, because even if it plays into Dragon’s game he really is happy she’s found a place (in his idiot grandson’s crew, no less).   
  
“Then why do you still support the perpetrators of the genocide against Ohara?” Dragon asks him plainly.   
  
Garp can tell his son is itching for a fight, but he’s an old man and all he wants to do is drink his beer in this dingy bar. “I don’t want to get into this with you, Dragon.”   
  
Undeterred, Dragon continues: “You don’t support Absolute Justice and you hate the World Nobles as much as any of us. I don’t understand, Dad, why you continue to work within a system that actively perpetuates oppression and violence to uphold the _privileges_ and _comfort_ of a select few?”   
  
“The Marines aren’t perfect,” Garp says wearily, “but they’re better than anything else that’s on the table. We’re keeping the peace—and sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than chaos and anarchy.”   
  
“I won’t pretend the Revolution will be pretty, but it’s a _chance_ ! A chance to build something better,” Dragon argues.   
  
“You can build something better without tearing it all down, Dragon—change the system for the better,” Garp rebutts, “without the bloody overthrow.”   
  
Dragon twitches at this, and can’t help but raise his voice a little when he says, “You can’t change this system from the inside! It is founded on oppression and controlled by the Celestial Dragons and they will never allow anything to get better. The only way to create change is to burn their regime and build something better in its ashes!”   
  
Garp sighs. They’ve had this argument a thousand times, although they both know they’re too bull-headed and stubborn to ever change their minds. “Dragon—“   
  
“No, dad. You taught me that Justice was about leveling the playing field, being _fair_ —and what use is Justice when only some are subjected to it? When the marines and the nobles hold to nothing except what benefits them? When the law enforcement is above the law?”   
  
Dragon is a powerful orator, charismatic and fierce. He had to be, to lead a revolution, but here with his big words and fierce gestures in this dismal little out-of-the-way nearly empty dive it all seems faintly ridiculous. Garp says nothing, looks down at his glass and lets silence speak for him. Dragon huffs a laugh and says, “I figured I’d try.”   
  
The children of D are willful and set in their ways, and Garp knows this better than anyone.   
  
Dragon says, “If you ever change your mind, there’s a place for you with us.”—an offer almost as old as the argument. And because there is always work to be done, after a moment he goes. Garp does not watch him go, because he believes in the letter of the law and his son is a wanted man.   


* * *

  
Enies Lobby and Impel Down and now Marineford—the brat really does have a way with secure Marine bases, huh. Chaos and destruction tends to be a Monkey family trait, but while Garp restrains himself to destroying the occasional building it looks like Luffy’s inherited his father’s knack for antagonizing world powers.   
  
And there’s Ace. Garp remembers Roger’s execution like it was yesterday: the way he stood, tall and unbowed, larger than life and knowing something no-one else would ever know. But Ace doesn’t look like Roger on the execution stand.   
  
He looks like Rouge, and it breaks Garp’s heart.   
  
Garp remembers Rouge. He remembers her like this: a woman like fire given flesh, freer than the wind and twice as unpredictable, the Pirate King’s equal and more. But he also remembers her weary and afraid, gaunt and haggard, the dregs of her spirit slipping through her grasp. It’s this second Rouge he sees in the bowed form of his grandson.   
  
And because he is a coward, he stands there and doesn’t intervene. He just waits, hating Sengoku and Sakazuki and everyone else for their parts in this farce, but most of all he hates himself. Rouge said to him, _Take care of my son_ . Roger said to him, _Take care of my son_ . Oh, if they could see him now.   
  
Duty and family. Garp has never been able to choose between the two, and he has refused to. But turning a blind eye won’t save Ace any longer.   
  
Sengoku says, “I’m going to tell them everything.” The ground shakes. The battle begins. And Garp just stands there, torn between two poles. He looks at Ace, and the battle raging below, and the execution stand.   
  
“If you try anything,” Sengoku warns, sensing his mood.   
  
“I know my duty,” says Vice Admiral Garp.   
  
The battle rages on, and on, and on. Whitebeard rages, the protective anger of a father who is oh so very afraid. Luffy, his brat of a grandson, rages as well. But Garp is an old marine, and he knows his duty all too well.   
  
And yet.   
  
The voice of his conscience sounds a lot like Dragon as it says,  _What use is Justice when only some are subjected to it?_   
  
As Garp looks out on the bloody battlefield, Sengoku the orchestrator beside him, he realizes that the way of the marines is not peace. The way of the marines, he realizes, is Buster calls and executions and ‘whoever wins this war becomes Justice.’   
  
Fuck this, Garp thinks. Sengoku turns to look away, and Garp strikes.   
  
He’s not called Garp the Fist for nothing: his blow shatters the execution stand and he snatches his grandson up and away before his colleagues can react. “My duty is to my family,” he tells Sengoku.   
  
His old friend replies, “The boy is the son of Gold Roger, Garp! He’s dangerous—it’s only Justice that we neutralize him before he can become a monster like his father—“   
  
“ _Neutralize_?” Garp asks incredulously. “Murder, Sengoku. Kill. If you want to kill my grandson at least look me in the eyes and say the words you mean.”   
  
Sengoku says, “You realize what you’ve done. That you can’t come back from this.”   
  
Garp tells him, “A child does not bear his father’s sins,” and because he is an old marine who knows when discretion is the better part of valor, he runs.   
  
“Hey, Newgate!” He shouts across the battlefield with a casual air he couldn’t be feeling any less. “Thanks for taking care of my shitty grandson all these years—he’s pretty annoying and I don’t want him, so you can have him back!”   
  
“Fuck you too, Gramps,” Ace mutters, but he’s smiling.   
  
Garp tells him, “Brace yourself, brat,” judges the distance between where he’s standing and his goal, takes stock of the marine forces in between him and Whitebeard, and in the world’s most high-stakes game of monkey-in-the-middle he throws his grandson as hard as he can.   
  
Then Sengoku is on him, betrayal plain on his face but Garp is laughing because no matter how this ends, Monkey D. Garp chooses freedom.   


* * *

  
After all is said and done, once the dead are buried and the living are counted, it’s Ace who asks: “What now?”   
  
“Now you do whatever the hell you want,” Garp tells him. This is a piece of sage old man advice that he finds works for every possible occasion.   
  
“And you?” a pirate asks him. “You can’t go back to the marines.” Garp is better at identifying who’s a pirate than he is at identifying which pirate they are, but he thinks that’s Flower Sword Vista.   
  
“Guess I can’t,” Garp agrees. He’s thought about finally retiring, living out the rest of his life on some peaceful island far away from conflict, but he’s been a fighter his whole life and he doesn’t think he can give that up now. Besides, the marines—and he doesn’t regret the choice but it’s bitter on his tongue to think ‘them’ and not ‘us’—the marines would find him eventually, and after what he’s done they’d never leave him alone.   
  
“You can join my crew,” Luffy offers nonchalantly, “I’m sure everyone’ll like you even though you’re a mean old grandpa!”   
  
That kid really knows how to butter you up, huh? “Nah,” Garp tells him. “But thanks, brat. I’ll join up with my shitty son, probably.”   
  
“Luffy’s father?” Ace asks, sounding interested.   
  
“Yeah,” Garp says. “He’s an ungrateful, contrary little brat. But he’s stuck to his ideals, and I’m proud of him for that.” After a moment, he grumbles, “And he was right in the end. He’ll never let me hear the end of it.”   
  
While he’s on a roll, he figures he may as well just say it. He clears his throat and says gruffly, “I’m proud of all of you shitty brats. Even if you’re pirates.”   
  
“Aw, Gramps,” Ace teases, “we’re proud of you too.”   
  
“No, really,” Garp tells him. “I’m proud of you. You and Luffy and even my son, although God knows he’s given me enough coronaries over the years.”   
  
Ace shrugs uncomfortably in acknowledgement, because he’s Ace and therefore awful at accepting sincere gestures of affection. Luffy really is the odd one out in their family: the rest of them are emotionally repressed bastards and they like it just fine that way.   
  
Ivankov offers—because apparently he’s been listening in this whole time and Garp just hadn’t noticed—, “If you’d like, I can let him know now.”   
  
“Best to get it over with,” Garp says.   
  
Ivankov pulls a den den mushi out of—somewhere, Garp isn’t totally sure. It occurs to him to wonder how Ivankov even has a way to contact Dragon, considering how long he’s been in Impel Down. He decides not to question it. Ivankov has ways.   
  
“I knew you’d come over to my side eventually,” the snail says in Dragon’s voice, baring its teeth in a grin only a father could love.   
  
“Shut up, brat,” Garp says, and grins back.

**Author's Note:**

> me yesterday: hmm :// tragic that there aren't any garp & dragon fics on ao3 :///  
> me today: hmmm


End file.
